Mid-Tier Power Index Profile: Moore Kingston Smith

In September, Accountancy Age proudly launched the inaugural edition of the Mid-Tier Power Index (MTPI): a brand new ranking designed to highlight excellence in the accounting industry’s mid-market.

The MTPI seeks to go beyond typical, financial metrics. While Profitability & Growth were taken into account as one of the four categories, the entrants were also assessed on Strategic Planning, Professional Excellence, and People & Community.

Securing 3rd place  in the ranking was Moore Global member firm, Moore Kingston Smith. During a conversation with Accountancy Age, managing partner Maureen Penfold stresses the importance of prioritising what the client wants as opposed to “what we want to sell”.

Professional Excellence – Clients must ‘have a voice’

MP: One of our key pillars is ‘clients at the core’. And so the sort of things we’re building around that are the client care programme. We’re constantly gathering formal feedback from clients and looking at how to improve that system and obtain a mix of qualitative and quantitative from each client.

That’s been really interesting because we get that insight into whether the client is satisfied or not, and then we use KPIs to monitor that and look at the trends. So generally it’s about making sure there is a quality control system in place and that the clients have a voice.

Most of the developments we’ve had in the business have been around what the clients want as opposed to what we want to sell them. And that’s actually helped us to develop different service line, the latest one being ESG. And we’ve actually upskilled in ESG based on what our clients say they want.

We also have a learning culture both internally and for our clients, and we have some very deep knowledge of individual sectors as opposed to just our service lines. Of course we understand accounts, audit, tax and all of that, but it’s about actually understanding the client’s business journey. And that, I think, really has a huge impact on our professional excellence.

People & Community – ‘Human touch sits at our heart’

MP: We’re a people business – they’re our main assets. And if you’ve got good people, you can serve good clients. So what we’re really trying to do around that is make sure that we are an inclusive place where everybody can flourish and achieve their potential.

One size doesn’t fit all when it comes to clients, but it doesn’t for people either. You need a mixed bag of people, so we’re trying to modernize the way people are treated within business, so that they’re trusted and it’s more of an open forum.

Everyone talks about purpose and values, but it’s equally important to make sure that we’re all aligned when it comes to those values – because then people can be individuals, not clones.

So we do things like online surveys, and I started running a managing partner update during COVID, and it’s overwhelming how many people sign up to that kind of thing so they can stay abreast of what’s happening in the firm. I think that’s important because otherwise people don’t feel part of it and identify with you.

The other thing is the human piece. Because as a firm we make sure we’re at the bleeding edge of stuff, but we want to retain that human touch. In a profession dominated by data and digits, human touch sits at our heart and sets us apart. Clients and talent alike select us for our authenticity and the care we provide to our local communities

So that feeds into our learning culture and ensuring that the training covers both sides. We’ve all done the technical stuff before, so actually, we’re focusing more effort on the softer skills that help our team develop as individuals and improve their social skills and become a more rounded business person.

Yes, there is a war on talent, but people will stay if they’re on a development journey and they’re building relationships and enjoying what they do.

Strategic Planning – ‘Strength in business is communication’

MP: Our goals and objectives drive our strategic pillars and their underlying actions, which in turn drive the annual growth plans for each business area and operations team, all underpinned by quality and consideration of the public interest.

So we have five strategic pillars, with quality running as a driver throughout all of them. So one of those is around growth, and we go through a thorough planning process for that where we make sure that each team in each sector in each firm across the network is aligned and collaborating to build out their plans and targets.

And then again, it’s all about communicating our strategy to everybody. So we have annual off-sites for each team, I do inductions every three months so that every single person across the firm has the same conversation in terms of what the strategy is and where we’re going as a firm.

I think strength in business is communication. So one of our pillars is to have one firm philosophy, and that means you’ve got to communicate, communicate, communicate, otherwise everyone’s on a different side.

Profitability & Growth – Sustainable success ‘flows into how we think’

MP: We’re at around £75m this year, which I believe is roughly 14% growth on last year, which is pleasing. But if you look at it over five years, we’re at just under 50%.

We’ve also added over 800 new clients during the last financial year, which has contributed over £10m in new fees. Our range of sector-specific business development campaigns, in addition to client referrals and relationships with Moore Global member firms, has impacted this heavily.

The fee size is improving, as is our average fee per client, which has increased by nearly 18% in the past year. We’ve been trying to win larger clients, and if we add value by genuinely understanding their goals, then we can share their success with them.

And that leads back to the strategy really – out first strategic pillar is sustainable success. And the reason that’s first, in my view, is that unless you’re a successful business, you can’t look after your people or your clients. You have to be profitable to be able to do any of it. So I think that sustainable success point flows into how we think.

What is the firm’s biggest challenge at the present time?

MP: I’m at a global conference right now, and there is not a single country that is not talking about talent and resources. So I think, without a doubt, resourcing is the biggest challenge we’re contending with.

So we’ve got a whole new recruitment and resourcing team,  and we’re investing in the tools for them to modernise and be able to have the right tools to help with that.

But the challenge is finding good people and enough people – hence the importance of everything we do. Because when you’ve got good people, you want them to stay. And that’s why it’s such a benefit that we’ve developed a wide array of services, because then we can ensure that, when someone is qualified, they can move about.

I’ve been here a lot of years because I’ve always been able to reinvent myself and find something new to focus on, and that’s the environment we create for our people.

Ultimately, you have to differentiate. It all comes back to making sure that you’re appealing to those people. And one of the reasons why we’d enter something like this Mid-Tier Power Index is because we need to communicate what it’s like to work for us.

The full rankings for the Accountancy Age Mid-Tier Power Index 2022 can be viewed here.